"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required." Winston Churchill

I like Churchill quotes.

There are so many situations where they are suitable and they have stood the test of time.

I chose this one for this blog because I was chatting with a lawyer from a well-known firm that is clearly struggling in the present climate and he said that he couldn’t understand it because they (the partners) were all “…doing their best to generate new business…”

I dug a little deeper.

By “..doing their best…” he went on to explain that “…they had increased their advertising spend and were doing a lot more marketing…”

He said that they had done all the traditional advertising in magazines, newspapers and corporate sponsorships but that it had been a waste of time and money.

Traditional advertising is one of the least effective ways to advertise a law firm. Unfortunately, most lawyers think that marketing and advertising are the same thing. The result is that you end up wasting money and have no new prospective customers to show for all the effort.

Here are three major reasons why advertising in the traditional sense does not work.

1. It does not move people along in the sales cycle. It's only effective in the first stage when the potential customer is getting to know you.

2. Frequent advertising is too costly for most budgets. Lots of advertising research has shown that you need to reach your prospects multiple times – usually from 5 to 7 times - to make enough of an impression so they will remember you when they need you.

3. Most adverts are often poorly designedor written, even to the point of being boring instead of influencing your target market. Often they are created by lawyers themselves and tend to drone on about how great at law the firm is and how long it’s been going.

The other problem with their approach is that “their best” was the advertising industry’s worst.

Imagine if an ad agency had decided to create their own contracts, do the legal work on their own property lease or handle their own employment law issues and you start to get the picture.

If they had been a little bit wiser and not so smart, they could have measured the results and gone on to target their future ad spends in the right areas.

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After many years paying lawyers,I became one in 2005 Just in time for the largest upheaval in the law since records began. Brilliant. Exiting times ahead.

Disclaimer. The thoughts, ideas and comments on this Blawg ("Blawg - a legal Blog) are my own and not to be confused (unless otherwise stated) with anyone else and certainly not of anyone in the Firm where I used to work and they are not the views of the firm where I used to work.